The National Council of Churches in the Civil Rights Movement Jacob Oertel

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We Come Late, Late We Come: The National Council of Churches in the Civil Rights Movement Jacob Oertel

Abstract: The National Council of Churches (NCC) was established in 1950 as an ecumenical organization for Protestant churches across the United States to exchange dialogue and work together, especially in response to the Civil Rights Movement. Its leaders intended to use the moral authority held by churches in their communities to encourage white Americans to embrace integration and condemn racism. The NCC had several devoted leaders and members who achieved symbolic victories, like sending a delegation to the March on Washington, and tangible victories, like organizing Midwestern churchgoers to persuade their congressmen to pass the Civil Rights Act. These actions, while substantial, were overshadowed by inertia, inconsistent messaging, and ideological moderation throughout the organization’s majority white membership. These traits were due in large part to the NCC’s inability to reckon with white Protestantism’s long history of racism in the United States and made it hesitant to act and quick to abandon the struggle once the Black Power Movement rose to prominence in the 1970s. The NCC remains a poignant example of how an organization’s inability to recognize its own privileged standing in American society inevitably prevents it from dismantling the inequalities which granted it that standing in the first place, no matter its original intentions.

11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. - Common expression during 1950s and 1960s.1

The church, as a whole, insists on a divine mission and guidance and the indisputable possession of truth. Is there anything in the record of the church in America in regard to the Negro to prove this? There is not. If the treatment of the Negro by the Christian Church is called ‘divine,’ this is an attack on the conception of God more blasphemous than any which the church has always been so ready and eager to punish. - W.E.B. DuBois in a 1931 article in The Christian Century.2

1 Introduction on Washington, and the introduction of the Civil The Civil Rights Movement (CRM) Rights Act in Congress to rally and act on their impacted nearly every public aspect of American rhetoric. This hesitancy largely blunted what could life, although it took longer for its effects to spread have been a highly effective effort to lead the to some institutions than others. Churches were confused and apprehensive white Protestant among the first institutions to segregate and among populace towards a new age of racial equality by the last to integrate.3 As part of this heritage, the appealing to their most trusted authority: religion. enormous moral weight wielded by Protestant Scholarship churches in the United States was mostly devoted Scholars of white Protestantism during the to bolstering, rather than subverting the status quo Civil Rights Movement differ on the extent to racial hierarchy. As the pace, breadth, and which national and local prograessive religious influence of the Civil Rights Movement expanded, organizations influenced the attitudes of ordinary Southern churches, like all other segregated laypeople and politicians. However, they agree that institutions, realized that the “traditional Southern until the 1950s, the majority of Protestant leaders way of life” was becoming unsustainable and would either supported segregation and other forms of have to change (or at least appear to). In the face of racial oppression, or were so ineffectual and this inevitability, some white Protestant leaders gradualist that they made no lasting impact on the stepped up, either in their local communities or as status quo. Scholarly works analyzing the part of national religious organizations, to relationship between Protestantism and race only encourage their followers to abandon the old ways emerged in the 1960s.4 These were based more in and embrace integration, arguing not only that this sociology rather than history and were often was the moral, Christian, thing to do, but also written by worried religious scholars heeding warning that failure to act would mean Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning that history condemnation from history and from God. The would judge white Christians harshly for their National Council of Churches (NCC) was an inaction during that critical time and would leave a association of many of these white Protestant stain on the legacy of the religion.5 leaders who wanted to exert a positive force on These are among the primary sources from their constituents. However, they required the which I will draw. I am also indebted to Davis W. denunciations of black leaders in order to see Houck and David E. Dixon for their compilation of segregation as a moral issue and often required speeches and sermons by religious leaders spanning external prompts like Brown v Board, the March the Civil Rights Movement.6 Gayraud Wilmore ______1 Stephen R. Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and 4 T. B. Maston, Segregation and Desegregation: A Christian Approach (New the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation (New York: Oxford, 2012), York: Macmillan, 1959); Paul Ramsey, Christian Ethics and the Sit-In, (New 8. York: Association Press, 1961); Reimers, White Protestantism; Donald W. 2 David M. Reimers, White Protestantism and the Negro (New York: Oxford Shriver, The Unsilent South; Prophetic Preaching in Racial Crisis University Press, 1965), 180. (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1965). 3 Shelton H. Smith, In His Image, But...: Racism in Southern Religion, 5 Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," (August, 1963). 1780-1910 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), xii; Haynes, The Last https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf Segregated Hour, 8. 6 Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, Rhetoric, Religion and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965 (Waco, Tex.:Baylor University Press, 2006). MURAJ • z.umn.edu/MURAJ 2 Volume 4 • Issue 6 and James Cone’s documentary history volume of attention to how Cold War fear of communism black theology has also been an held back integrationist Protestants.9 Stephen R. invaluable source.7 While I am unable to physically Haynes gave an in-depth look at the unique kneel- travel to the NCC archives at the Presbyterian in movement, in which outside activists forced Historical Society in Philadelphia, James Findlay, churches to reassess their own racial policies.10 discussed below, did a marvelous job synthesizing While this paper focuses specifically on the archival materials in his book. I have also found white Christianity, David Chappell highlighted the many newspaper articles about NCC activities and leadership role of black Christians, arguing that public statements by the NCC on online databases. prophetic, revivalist Christian traditions had an Only in the 1990s did a secular historical unparalleled impact on the success of the Civil scholarship emerge to engage with the actions of Rights Movement. Chappell described how civil white Protestants during the Civil Rights rights leaders, like Old Testament prophets, could Movement and to gauge their impact on the ever- stand aside from society and speak truth to power, shifting American racial landscape. James Findlay, regardless of what the dominant narrative of the whose history of the NCC this paper is indebted to, time demanded.11 Although less focused on conducted an extensive study on the changing religion, Jason Sokol gave compelling evidence of tactics and motivations of the NCC from its the lack of clarity of ordinary whites’ beliefs during foundation in 1950 to the end of the 1960s, finding the most tumultuous political time in their life and that white churches made marginal progress how influential the leanings of the religious leaders integrating on their own, even when provided with in their lives could be.12 Sandra K. Gill expounded compelling rhetoric and reasons to do so.8 He on this, using sociological studies to show how argued that they took concrete action only when white solidarity created a silence around the issue spurred to do so by the black-led movement, which of segregation, building up the inertia which threatened to leave them in the dust of history if progressive religious organizations struggled to they didn’t change. There is also a number of overcome.13 existing scholarly works that either analyze specific My paper will build on these works by religious civil rights activism outside the NCC or focusing on how southerners defined their own allow a broader view of Christianity’s role during whiteness in relation to rapidly shifting religious that time. Michael Friedland added another piece and political standards in a historical study of the of vital scholarship analyzing the factors pushing NCC. Specifically, I will show how mainstream and pulling religious nstitutions, giving special Protestant values have been changing since the ______7 Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone, Black Theology: A Documentary 11 David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979). Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 8 James F. Findlay, Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of 12 Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950–1970 (New York: Oxford Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). University Press, 1993). 13 Sandra K. Gill, “Recalling a Difficult Past: Whites’ Memories of 9 Michael B. Friedland, Lift Up Your Voice Like a Trumpet: White Clergy Birmingham,” Sociological Inquiry 82, no. 1 (2012): 29–48. https:// and the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements, 1954–1973 (Chapel Hill: doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2011.00404.x. University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 10 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour.

MURAJ • z.umn.edu/MURAJ 3 Volume 4• Issue 6 founding of the American colonies in order to Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But its give a moral sanction to the US’s changing racial wealth was based on the enslavement and unpaid political policies. These mainstream Protestant labor of captives taken from Africa, who were values diverged from those of black Protestant deprived of those unalienable rights. Christian churches, which formed their own oppositional clerics provided one of the most persuasive ideas culture. The NCC’s failure to recognize and to bridge that uncomfortable dissonance: The reconcile that difference led to its inability to Curse Theory, also called the Hamitic Theory. engage with the goals of the Black Power This was based on a passage from Genesis 9:18-29, Movement at the tail end of the Civil Rights which traces “the black race” to Ham, the son of Movement. I will argue that, despite the clarity of Noah, who cursed Ham’s descendants to be the vision of its leadership, especially J. Oscar Lee, servants of the descendants of his lighter-skinned Eugene Carson Blake and Robert Spike, the NCC sons, Shem and Japheth.14 This had already was unable to make much real progress outside percolated among Persian scholars since the 900s, the activist framework built by the black-led Civil but was codified into a theory specifically linking Rights Movement in the 1960s because of the pact scripture and black inferiority in 1578 by George of silence among white Protestants and the Best, where after it quickly caught on.15 The unrecognized racial privilege which allowed them Hamitic Theory not only clearly delineated to do so. Africans as biologically separate from their white My paper will begin with a brief overview enslavers, but as naturally inferior and rightfully of Christian involvement in the construction of subjugated according to God’s word in the Bible. the American racial hierarchy, starting from the This belief in the God-ordained separation arrival of the first black people in the American of races had already influenced the first English colonies in 1619 onwards. It will then transition to code of law in the Virginia colony, which in 1630 religious influence on attitudes towards ordered the whipping of a white man for “abusing segregation and the Civil Rights Movement in the himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of 1950s and 60s and discuss how it helped build up Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a the selective consciousness and inertia that negroe [sic].”16 By the 1700s, hundreds of slaves solidified de facto segregation as opposed to de had been brought to the American colonies. In jure. The heart of the paper will analyze how the order to justify the continuing influx, Puritan NCC waded into this world of prejudices and ministers like Samuel Willard in Boston declared solidarities, and also break down the strategies that “All Servitude…began in the curse” and was they used throughout the CRM, whether or not “so ordered in the Providence of God.”17 and why they accomplished their intended goals, However, unlike the Spanish Catholics who and the impact they have made on society today. baptized enslaved Africans so they might reap Slavery and Abolition ______14 Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of The United States’ legal foundations were Racist Ideas in America (New York, NY: Nation Books, 2017), 21. based on Christian notions of morality and 15 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 32. 16 Smith, In His Image, But..., 3. equality, that all men are “endowed by their 17 Ibid, 5 MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ 4 Volume 4• Issue 6 their heavenly reward for fulfilling their earthly law and religious teachings in the American duty of servitude, English slaveowners at first did colonies was the Virginia colony’s law, passed in not convert their slaves. They believed that it 1662 and which spread to the other colonies, would be unethical to enslave fellow baptized which decreed that all children born “derived their Christians and feared that introducing slaves to status from the condition of the mother.”20 This Christian principles would educate them and law was passed in order to allow slaveowners to cause them to rebel against their treatment. After rape female slaves, both for their own all, Christianity would become the first social gratification, but more importantly, to increase grouping in which masters and slaves would share their wealth by creating more slaves. Religious – they would be more connected by both holding principle, which at the time would still have the belief in the divinity of Christ. These attitudes decreed the whipping of the perpetrators of began to shift in the 1700s thanks to the prolific miscegenation for “abusing himself to the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who tirelessly dishonor of God and the shame of Christians,” advocated for the Christianization of slaves, was trumped by masters’ sexual desire and arguing that Christianity contained no law financial expediency. The ensuing mass rape was forbidding servitude and that to do so would instead justified by the development of the myth make them more docile and efficient workers. He of black female hypersexuality, that female slaves was confident that if masters taught their slaves were so sexually aggressive that they were scripture through a filter of justification, they incapable of withholding consent and so lascivious could “show them, That it is GOD who has that they seduced their masters. This myth would caused them to be Servants; and that they Serve eventually gain a religious face in the creation of JESUS CHRIST, while they are at Work for their the hypersexual minstrel character: The Jezebel. Masters.”18 This message was magnified by Heeding Mather and Whitefield’s George Whitefield, the most influential promises, slaveowners began baptizing and evangelical minister of the Great Awakening, teaching slaves that their labor was God-ordained who hoped that through his teaching, “masters that they could achieve salvation through carrying and mistresses will shortly see that Christianity it out without complaint. This was a powerful and will not make their negroes worse slaves.”19 demoralizing method of mental colonization and These messages soothed the consciences of any internalizing feelings of inferiority for many slaveowners concerned with how the imposition slaves, especially those born in the New World. of bondage coincided with God’s will. However, many slaves saw themselves in the The only significant rift between secular enslaved Hebrews in Egypt of the Book of Exodus ______18 Cotton Mather and Paul Royster, editor, "The Negro Christianized. An 21 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 223. Essay to Excite and Assist that Good Work, the Instruction of Negro- Servants in Christianity (1706)" (1706), Electronic Texts in American Studies, 28, 20. 19 George Whitefield, The Journals of George Whitefield (Shropshire, England: Quinta Press, 2009), 526. 20 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 41.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ 5 Volume 4• Issue 6 and saw their enslavement as cruel and unjust rhetoric, some were vehicles for abolitionism as as that of the Israelites. Church also became a well. Not all Christians were convinced of the community-building hub for slaves on Sundays, benevolent and Godly nature of slavery. The where they could form relationships outside Quakers of Pennsylvania, while a largely those imposed by slave-owners, preserve slaveowning population, produced some of the traditions from Africa, and sometimes plot first and most strident opponents of the against their masters. These realms of mental institution. Primary among these was John and physical resistance would build the Woolman, who launched an assiduous campaign ideological and demographic foundations of against every point other clergymen used to black churches, which continued to use defend slavery. His essay, Some Considerations Christian scripture as a site of subverting the on the Keeping of Negroes, the first part of which status-quo of white Christianity. Black churches was published in 1754, contained rhetoric which remolded Christianity to suit their cultures and would be echoed by proponents of abolitionism circumstances, an action which white Christians and civil rights until the present day. The core of feared and condemned. Journalist Henry his argument, backed up by scripture, was that all Villard, for example, was repelled by the Gullah men are brethren because they share in God’s people of South Carolina’s syncretic divinity, that “liberty is the gift of God to all his Christianity, which he saw as tainted by “savage children,” and that all men are “equally entitled superstitions” and “fetish worship.”21 Black to treatment according to the Golden Rule churches’ formation of a new Christian culture (Matt. 7:12).”22 He also directly attacked the forever set them apart from the umbrella of Hamitic Theory, saying that the idea of slavery as white Protestantism, which continued to view a punishment for the sin “committed by Ham, them as wayward and savage. This division of the son of Noah; is a supposition too gross to be Christianity along racial lines alienated black admitted into the mind of any person, who churches from the religious power structure of sincerely desires to be governed by solid the United States, but also prevented them from principles.”23 Those like Judge Samuel Sewall being co-opted by white ideology and gave them attacked the Hamitic Theory on a scriptural level, a measure of independence from all white interpreting the ambiguous passage from Genesis influence. These ideological differences ensured as saying that the curse fell upon Canaan, not that church integration would require not only Ham, and that according to his interpretation, a changed attitude on race, but a fundamental dark-skinned people were actually descended reconciliation of differing religious beliefs. This from Cush.24 Where humanitarian arguments paradox of using the same Bible to justify and appealing to a common brotherhood might fall attack slavery did not go unnoticed by some ______white ministers and preachers. Where many 22 Smith, In His Image, But..., 27-28. 23 John Woolman, “Some Considerations on Keeping Negroes,” (1754), Christian churches provided platforms from 1. which clergymen could formulate and 24 Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph (Boston: printed byBartholomew disseminate slavery-justifying ideology and Green and John Allen, 1700), 2

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on deaf ears, technical dissections of the literal black people, lamenting that “religion indeed has meaning of the Bible were in fashion. These produced a Phyllis Wheatley; but it could not arguments spread quickly throughout the produce a poet.”26 Even the most fiery and northern colonies, and later states, solidifying popular voice of abolitionism, William Lloyd the North as free land where the moral compass Garrison, believed that African Americans were turned against slavery. Public opinion of in need of uplift from the brutish state into religious Northerners regarded slavery as at which slavery had plunged them, calling for an worst an abomination against God in need of “increase in knowledge and moral improvement” immediate dismantling and at best a necessary of free black people and that it would not yet be evil, for those like Thomas Jefferson, who practicable “to give undeveloped black men the continued to own slaves while vaguely wishing vote,” a sentiment with which Abraham Lincoln “to see the end of prejudice and slavery.”25 agreed.27 These assumptions of black inferiority, Religious southerners, however, largely refused which received an added bolster from the rise of to be swayed, especially after the patenting of scientific racism pioneered by eugenicists like the cotton gin in 1794. This exponentially Francis Galton, meant that white Christianity increased the profitability and demand for continued to sanction segregation and unequal slavery and amplified religious justifications for treatment of African Americans even after the it while silencing condemnations. goal of emancipation had been accomplished. It is crucial to remember that religious Religion and political ideology were so abolitionists rarely believed in the full equality of intertwined during the 1800s that even African Americans and usually considered them politicians and activists with no claim to religious intellectually inferior. In their minds, abolition leadership used prophetic rhetoric to persuade seldom translated into integration and civil their listeners that God was on their side. rights. They instead hoped for either a Garrison, while addressing a crowd of free black segregated system, through which benevolent people, claimed that his abolition work was a white philanthropists would raise the black race duty, “as a lover of Jesus Christ, and of his to the level of mental cultivation of “exceptional equalizing, republican and benevolent precepts, I Negroes” like the popular poet Phyllis Wheatley, rejoice to meet,” and cried out to his crowd, “take or a mass recolonization of frica, by which slaves courage…fear not: the Lord God is on your would be sent to Liberia and maintain America’s side.”28 Christian activists during the CRM racial purity. Thomas Jefferson believed that loved to cite a story about Abraham Lincoln, even Christianity’s “civilizing” power had its which may or may not have actually occurred. limits in bettering the inferior minds of most When a delegation of ministers told Lincoln ______25 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 122. 28 William Lloyd Garrison and African American Pamphlet Collection, 26 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: J. An Address, Delivered Before the Free People of Color, in Philadelphia, Stockdale, 1787), 234. 27 Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 169, 229. New-York, and other cities, during the month of June (Boston: Printed by Stephen Foster, 1831), 3-4. 29 Maston, Segregation and Desegregation, 167. 30 Smith, In His Image, But..., 190.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ 7 Volume 4• Issue 6 that they hoped the Lord was on their side during failed God’s will sparked the biblically-named the Civil War, Lincoln, informed them that his Redemption movement after Reconstructionists was not his concern, “for we know that the Lord weakened their hold on Southern governments in is always on the side of the right. But it is my 1877. The Redemptioners, aided by Klan terrorism, constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation desired returning the South as close to its postwar should be on the Lord’s side.”29 These examples state as possible through overturning all show how preoccupied the American people Reconstruction laws and alternate forms of black were with God’s judgement as well as how forced labor like convict-leasing in order to redeem fundamental religion was to Americans’ self- themselves in the eyes of God. The Klan believed conception of their citizenship in a nation itself to be a team of Christian, specifically aligned with Jesus’s “republican” precepts. Protestant, crusaders using divinely sanctioned Siding with God was not the monopoly of violence to achieve the goal of Redemption. northerners, however. Southern ministers The sense of white superiority among white countered this rhetoric by accusing abolitionism abolitionists was confirmed after the Emancipation of “replacing the authority of the word of God Proclamation and the 13th Amendment had with that of a ‘higher law’ and…thus achieved their goals. The energy with which they [becoming] a rationalistic and atheistic had campaigned for abolition did not extend into a movement perilous to the Christian faith.”30 fight for equality, or even integration. The few During the Civil War, they maintained that Reconstruction-era reformers still fighting for slavery was God’s way of redeeming African increased political power for Southern black people savages through work and the learning of the were silenced or scared off by the rise of gospel and that “only a Confederate victory Redemption. As David Reimers lamented, “in the would assure the fulfillment of God’s design for 1870s, this crusade waned, and the Protestant the Negro and preserve true Christianity in churches capitulated to the system of segregation America.”31 After the Civil War, former and discrimination that has characterized Confederates like John B. Adger, professor of American race relations ever since.”33 Northern church history at Columbia Theological white churches considered their work done and Seminary, defended themselves by saying, slipped into complacency, while Southern white “Slavery is a form of government which the Bible churches actively assisted the Redemption does not condemn. The Southern [Presbyterian] movement, a state of affairs which continued for Church did therefore not condemn it. She does the next several decades. In the meantime, black not condemn it now… Any man or church who churches in the South fought white interference, says it is a sin takes some other rule of faith and built community and formed leaders in the face of is so far infidel.”32 The continued propagation of massive opposition. these sentiments among defeated Confederates Segregation and Integration coupled with the stinging belief that they had The 1900s saw a scientific revolution and ______31 Smith, In His Image, But..., 190. 33 Reimers, White Protestantism and the Negro, vii. 32 Ibid, 209.

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an expansion of the power of the federal Associate Minister of the Washington Street government in the United States, both of which Methodist Church, in Andersen, South Carolina, widened the gap between church and state. he gave an ambitious sermon appealing for racial Religion, while still vital in the everyday lives of equality. His rhetoric appealed to religion, quoting many, began losing its hallowed position as the St. Paul that “God has made all men of one blood,” only source of truth and morality. Religious uplift suasion (the showcasing of “model black ideology was no longer necessary to legitimize citizens” to prove they are not inferior), citing government. The Hamitic Theory took a George Washington Carver and Marian Anderson, backseat to Scientific Racism, which produced and patriotism, bringing up the nearby army bogus study after bogus study confirming to training facility and saying, “Colored men are white people what they already knew – that training to fight Hitler right now but can’t vote as whites had rationality and culture while blacks citizens of South Carolina because of the all-white had brute strength and sexuality, which made primary.” While some youths expressed support of them good unskilled laborers but dangerous to his words, the church board was less impressed, white women and should be kept separate. The excoriating him, blacklisting him, and reassigning Plessy v Ferguson decision of 1896 allowed whites him to a dying church in a small town.34 This was a to live under the delusion that black facilities common fate for clergy who stepped out of line to were separate and equal and that black people’s try to speak truth to power. inability to lift themselves out of poverty was World War II did help change some therefore their own fault. Southerners’ perceptions on race. Many white White churches no longer took the lead in soldiers from the South returned to their disseminating racist theory, but they confirmed it communities changed men after risking their lives by consistently reassuring their congregations alongside black comrades in arms. The Double-V that segregation was beneficial to both races and campaign, led by black activists, compounded that both wanted it that way. White church these changes in attitude by pointing out the boards, especially, but not exclusively, in the hypocrisy of the US fighting for democratic ideals South, were usually made up of wealthy and against a racist regime while still imposing terror conservative men who regulated the messages and discrimination on a large segment of its own their clergy spread. As younger and more open- population. A white Petty Officer, Lewis Barton, minded clergy members graduated from wrote in his hometown newspaper in Lumberton, seminaries and searched for church positions, North Carolina, that, “before the war I had the they found themselves censored and subjected to same feelings towards the Negro as the typical a pact of silence if they wanted to keep their jobs. Southerner. God didn’t intend them to have equal One such minister was Joseph Evans, part of the rights with other races, I thought,” before new cohort of religious leaders who graduated elaborating how his views had drastically divinity school in 1940, many of whom were changed.35 Sergeant Joe Gilmer went even further, consumed with ideas of race and a fear of a race ______34 war - ideas stemming from World War II. As Sara Evans, Interview by author, Phone Interview, Minneapolis, October 9, 2019.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ 9 Volume 4• Issue 6 writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I am 1947, a black man suspected of killing a white cab afraid that all race prejudice is gone from the driver. He began by addressing the systemic boys who have fought this war.”36 While Gilmer silence, saying, “I know there are some of us who and his platoon’s awakening was encouraging would like to say, ‘Let's have no more talk of and part of a powerful trend among young white lynching: it has been talked about the streets, on men and women, his words were not true at all. the buses, discussed in stores and beer halls and Barton and Gilmer were still in a minority, as factories, and at least skirted around in the home most white soldiers believed that the American and Sunday School, and it’s no subject values they had fought to defend very much for church.’” He was fed up with the silence, included racial customs, beliefs supported by knowing it was the only thing which shielded the segregated garrisons. While some white perpetrators from confronting the inhumanity of Americans at home saw patriotism and loyalty in their actions. Knowing that some of the black soldiers, more were livid with anger at murderers and people who knew them were in his seeing them in equal uniforms and paralyzed audience, he decided he would not allow them with fear seeing them with guns. Lynchings and this shelter any longer, bellowing, “Christian riots spiked during and after the war as Southern friends, who lynched Willie Earle?... WICKED whites attempted to ensure that those military MEN, UNGODLY SOULS, MEN WITHOUT uniforms wouldn’t give black citizens “ideas THE LOVE OF CHRIST!”39 He felt that he had a above their station.”37 Ben Fielder, a black moral responsibility to speak up, for to respect the soldier who thought that his wartime pact of silence was to tacitly offer not only his camaraderie with whites was indicative of a own condonement of the crime, but that of broader trend soon found his hopes dampened Protestantism as a whole. Ministers like Lynn upon his return home, where he met only were part of a growing cohort of white Protestant coldness and anger, even from former comrades. clergy who were growing increasingly “I was still just a n*****. Not an American soldier disillusioned with their role as upholders of the anymore. Just a n*****.”38 The status quo had racial order, who likely thought often of Lincoln’s been challenged, but remained intact. Churches worry that he would be found on the side of God. largely continued preaching what they had However, most white Christian forays into preached to Barton before the war. activism were still tempered by a fear of After the war, a minority of white implicating the Protestant Church in the clergymen were able to break through the pact of formation and maintenance of the racial silence. A particularly fiery example of this was hierarchy which they found increasingly Hawley Lynn, of Pickens County, South abhorrent. As the CRM swelled, empowered by Carolina, who delivered a fiery sermon after 31 the Brown decision in 1954, liberal clergy found local men lynched Willie Earle on February 16, themselves faced with a true test of action: acting ______35 Sokol, There Goes My Everything, 19. 39 Will Gravely, “‘A Man Lynched in Inhuman Lawlessness’: South 36 Ibid, 19. Carolina Methodist Hawley Lynn condemns the killing of Willie Earle 37 Sokol, There Goes My Everything, 20. (1947),” Methodist History 35, no. 2 (1997): 76-77, 38 Ibid, 24 40 Gill, “Recalling a Difficult Past,” 31.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 10 on their progressive rhetoric and integrating history of the Protestant Church’s interactions churches. Clergy had an unprecedented ability to with black Americans, starting from slavery.43 It shape the identities of their followers as before tries to highlight the work of progressive, anti- the CRM, “white identity was based in racial segregationist clergy throughout that history. And segregation.”40 As this foundation was being while it implicates the Church in spreading racist uprooted, church leaders had the opportunity to ideology, it also tries to credit it for the CRM, fill the void with tolerant and charitable ideas as albeit inadvertently, saying about postwar they so frequently preached from scripture. And missionary schools for emancipated slaves, indeed, their words were having some impact on “Although the educational programs of northern the attitudes of their congregants, who found missionaries smacked of paternalism and Booker themselves increasingly confused and adrift in T. Washington’s philosophy, they also propagated tumultuous times. Kenneth T. Andrews and the Christian gospel.” He linked these schools to others conducted a study during the spreading the formation of the black ministers leading the boycott movement, which found that in general, movement, hoping that “It may well be that these church attendance had a “negative impact… on Negro churchmen will yet teach the white support for the sit-ins,” but that “Whites who Protestant churches the full meaning of the gospel attended churches where ministers discussed of the brotherhood of man they espouse.”44 In moderate views on ‘race relations’ were more doing so, he characterized the Church as both likely to support protest.”41 This aligns with cause and cure of America’s racial problem, while Jason Sokol’s thesis that most white Southerners also placing the burden of the latter upon black had no coherent response to the movement, that ministers. He was also quick to argue that they were “fearful, silent, and often inert,” and “Protestantism’s treatment of the Negro was no that “Southern churches both shaped and better and no worse than that of American society reflected the changing – or stagnant – racial as a whole.”45 However, he conceded that these attitudes of white southerners.”42 For many arguments invalidate the Church’s claim to be a small communities, churches were the main leader in the formation of social consciousness sources of leadership, and members anxiously and the guardian of morality and makes it appear clung to their words, hoping for reassurance. as a passive bystander, saying, “The churches Some white Christians at the time did try might be expected to behave better than secular to address the structural roots of church institutions, however, because they are supposed segregation while still trying to avoid a complete to be the moral leaders of society.”46 Stephen condemnation of church practice. A good Haynes made the same observation writing from example of this is David Reimers, who wrote the present day, pointing out that the church White Protestantism and the Negro, a detailed claimed more authority on moral issues than ______41 Kenneth T. Andrews, Kraig Beyerlein, and Tuneka Tucker Farnum, 44 Ibid, 188. “The Legitimacy of Protest: Explaining White Southerners’ Attitudes 45 Ibid, 180. Toward the Civil Rights Movement., Social Forces 94, no. 3 (2016): 1037. 46 Ibid, viii. 42 Sokol, There Goes My Everything, 4, 100. 47 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour, 8. 43 Reimers, White Protestantism and the Negro. 48 Sokol, There Goes My Everything, 100.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 11 society as a whole, conceding “But this does not these values and expanded its organizational relieve American Christianity of responsibility structure while also shifting its priority to for its sunning moral failure half a century ago, working directly with smaller churches. As Jill when many Christians responded to the gradual K. Gill points out, the very definition and nature integration of society by drawing a line in the of ecumenism is complex and confusing as it sand around their churches.”47 While churches encompasses beliefs ranging from: were not the sole originators of racist theories community over self-interest, peaceful designed to legitimize the oppression of African discussion over violence, collaboration Americans, “they imbued the pre-civil rights over competition, universalism over racial order with elements of timelessness and exclusivity, the prophetic role to “speak righteousness that only religion could truth to power” over affirming an impart.”48 The vacillating and gradualism of oppressive status quo, benevolence over progressive Christians like Reimers was individual acquisition, preaching social illustrative of the reluctant nature of white justice over mere personal piety, and the church leaders to face the implications of the separation of church and state.50 CRM head-on. This was the religious All of these would be put to the test over the environment in which the National Council of next two decades. Churches formed, hoping to bring strength, The FCC had already set up a modest organization, and consensus to these hesitant foundation for opposing segregation, filing an and confused individuals. amicus curiae brief supporting Heman Sweatt in The National Council of Churches the 1950 Supreme Court case Sweatt v. Painter, The National Council of Churches was which forced the University of Texas Law School established in 1950, not from scratch, but as a to admit a black applicant, a crucial blow against replacement of the Federated Council of Plessy v. Ferguson. The FCC had also Churches (FCC), which was founded in 1908. established a Department of Race Relations in The FCC included member organizations 1921, which was headed by Dr. George Haynes, representing Protestant denominations, creator of Fisk University’s Sociology especially Baptist and Presbyterian. The FCC Department and co-founder of the Urban was founded to promote ecumenism, the League. The NCC’s stance on desegregation and strengthening of ties and communications racial equality in its early years was actually a between different church branches, as well as to step backwards from that of its predecessor. promote the Social Gospel, the call for humans When the Brown v Board of Education case was to rid themselves of social evils to make way for making headlines in 1954, the NCC passed a the Second Coming of Christ. The NCC shared resolution supporting the decision after it was ______49 Findlay, Church People, 5. 51 Findlay, Church People, 17. 50 Jill K. Gill, Embattled Ecumenism: The National Council of Churches, the Vietnam War, and the Trials of the Protestant Left (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 5.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 12 made, but never submitted an amicus curiae segregation rang hollow when compared with their attempting to influence it.52 The relative own actions. The NCC began by attempting to silence of the NCC in its early years can clarify their religious stance on the matter in their partially be explained by the rising threat of 1952 “Statement on Churches and Segregation” communism in the minds of Americans in the which stated that “the pattern of segregation is 1950s. The NCC, being an ecumenical diametrically opposed to what Christians believe organization, sought to find common ground about the worth of men. We must take our stand with all denominations. Given the tense against it.”54 However, despite this progressive political atmosphere, even the remotest hint of rhetoric on racial equality, during the early 1950s communism in its platform and ideology would NCC was almost exclusively white except for some drive away those fearing a touch of the red black secretaries and J. Oscar Lee.55 Lee was paintbrush. As Michael B. Friedland put it: Haynes’s student and replaced him in the FCC in As [conservative Christians] believed 1947, keeping his position as Director of the segregation to be a Christian doctrine, it Department of Race Relations after the transition to necessarily followed that those who the NCC, in which the name changed to The sought to undermine it were atheists, Department of Racial and Cultural Relations. He and they concluded that all atheists was the most radical and outspoken voice in the were Communists, all integrationists t organization, but he faced stifling opposition from ook their orders from Moscow, and within as the leadership resisted his efforts to were thus seeking to impose a foreign integrate his own staff and toned down his ideology on the South.53 proposed condemnation of the Emmett Till Verdict This argument was strikingly similar to the idea in 1956.56 These actions and, more tellingly, that abolitionists were following a rational and inactions, followed with the NCC’s general attitude atheistic higher law, so popular in Southern of prioritizing continuity over change and churches a century earlier. While the NCC was education over activism. willing to take the PR hit of denouncing Interestingly, among NCC leaders, segregation (which was nearly the only thing recognizing the problem of churches’ blindness, they did during the 1950s), the fear of being unwillingness, and gradualism was seldom an issue, perceived as communist remained in the backs at least in words. Self-aware voices spoke loudly and of their minds, moderating the amount and often angrily, usually to little effect. Lee, in his zealousness of the actions they were willing to analysis of the process of desegregation in 1954 take. The Red Scare would continue to after the Brown decision argued, “The pattern of influence the NCC during the entire Civil segregation in the United States is given moral Rights Movement. sanction by the fact that churches and church Even the NCC’s denunciations of institutions, as a result of insensitiveness and social ______52 Ibid, 17. 54 Findlay, Church People, 14. 53 Friedland, Lift Up Your Voice, 46. 55 Findlay, Church People, 18. 56 Ibid, 20.

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practice.” He differentiated between de jure still striking. This shift is the result of years of segregation, which was collapsing, and de facto frustration with inertia and complacency, both segregation, which existed in citizens’ minds and on the part of the NCC and the local held strong. He realized that eliminating the communities which the NCC had since entered latter form would require “dealing with to assist in a full activist role. These customary practices of segregation in almost developments and the difficulty which every aspect of the organization.”57 This accompanied them will be expanded upon below. statement, one of the NCC’s strongest of the The main activist step taken by the NCC decade, was still characterized by hesitant, in the 1950s was the “Southern Plan,” a vacillating language of not wishing to offend Movement to talk to the white religious leaders anyone. It was filled with reassurances of the there and form connections with the benignity of integration and highlighted success predominantly black activists.59 This man was stories of integrated churches where, contrary to Will Campbell, a respected and gregarious white expectations, nothing happened. It applauded minister and World War II veteran with gradual progress where it was being made, innovative ideas on how religion should especially in YMCAs and YWCAs, the Christian influence racial attitudes. For example, he organizations with the youngest and least argued that embracing integration and religious frightened memberships. equality was a form of Redemption in the eyes of The NCC would sharpen over the next God, a radical twist on the word segregationists decade as it learned the full extent and systemic had appropriated to fight Northern nature of mental barriers to integration, as well Reconstruction policies after the Civil War. As as the difficulty of breaking them down. This is he put it, “‘by this grace we are no longer Negro the statement of Robert W. Spike, Director of the or white…but we are a part of a community NCC’s recently-founded Commission on which asks only one question and that has to do Religion and Race after the successful passage of with redemption, not with color.’ And the Civil Rights Act of 1964, published in the Southerner ‘understands these words.’”60 In popular magazine Look, “For years, most of our addition to offering his services to civil rights churches have aided and abetted the Anglo- leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., the Saxon white conspiracy... the churches in this Montgomery Improvement Association, and country have been dominated by our society's other integration leaders in smaller cities, equivocation and, sometimes, outright evil in the Campbell was instrumental in reporting the matter of discrimination.”58 While it is Southern situation back to the northern-based important to note that Spike, being white, was NCC. The leadership was still out-of-touch as to freer to make bolder statements, the tonal shift is exactly how severe the racial hierarchy was and ______57 59 J. Oscar Lee, "The Status of Racial Integration in Religious Findlay, Church People, 22. Institutions," The Journal of Negro Education 23, no. 42 Sokol, There 60 Ibid, 26. Goes My Everything, 4, 100. 3 (1954): 232. 61 Ibid, 27. 58 Robert Spike, “Our Churches’ Sin Against the Negro,” Look 29, no. 10 62 Friedland, Lift Up Your Voice, 46. (May 18, 1965): 29. 63 Sokol, There Goes My Everything, 101.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 14 how ordinary people might react to the guidance action by the condemnations of the black and intervention of a Northern organization.61 leadership, both secular and religious, who had Campbell had realized that “racism had become far surpassed them. And they found more part of the segregationist’s ‘religious heritage’ concrete initiatives they could help with without and a ‘heresy’ with which Protestantism had not leading, like the March on Washington, the yet learned to cope.”62 His motivation was fueled Freedom Summer, and especially the fight to by an intense fear “that white supremacy would pass the Civil Rights Act. Findlay observed this retain a stranglehold on southern religion,” a fear tipping point, referring to it using the New started when he witnessed a ceremony in which Testament word Kairos, or “a ‘right’ time, or the Klan presented a pulpit Bible to his moment of heightened expectations…a time of childhood church.63 opportunity demanding a response: God offers While these were all positive actions us a new set of possibilities and we have to accept showing the NCC’s growing commitment to join or decline.”65 He coined the term in this context. the struggle instead of cheering from the A well-funded Commission on Religion and sidelines, Campbell was only as successful as one Race was created in order to “catch up” with the man can be. Not only did the NCC not expand CRM. A council spokesperson affirmed in 1963 the program when they saw it was going well, but upon the creation of the Commission that “there they dragged their feet even getting it started, has always seemed to be a time for gradual delaying Campbell’s deployment until late 1956, change, and modest tokens of progress in racial prioritizing their funding for other activities. justice were accepted as the best we can do.” Henry J. Pratt explains the tight-fistedness of the They realized that the current circumstances NCC in relation to activism as partially due to made this stagnation immoral and hypocritical, “‘The National Lay Committee,’ a group of ultra- continuing, “In such a time the Church of Jesus conservatives who in those years exercised Christ is called upon to put aside every lesser significant influence at the highest policy engagement, to confess her sins of omission and levels.”64 No matter how pure the intentions of delay, and to move forward to witness her many of its members, the NCC’s agenda was still essential belief that every child of God is a held hostage by the fear of public judgement. brother to every other.”66 There was a growing It was in the 1960s that the NCC, swayed sense within the NCC that the Day of Reckoning by the inescapable momentum of the CRM and was close at hand, and they remembered the fueled by an increasingly youthful and radical verse from Matthew 25:31–46, that the sheep leadership, finally committed themselves to would be separated from the goats, and yearned acting on the rhetoric they had been espousing to be in the former category. for the last decade. They were shamed into Integrationist religious leaders within and ______64 Henry J. Pratt, "The Growth of Political Activism in the National 66 Ibid, 3. Council of Churches," The Review of Politics Churches’ Sin Against the 67 Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," (August, Negro,” Look 29, no. 10 (May 18, 1965): 29. 34, no. 3 (1972): 332. 1963), 5. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/ 65 Findlay, Church People, 4. Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 15 68 and outside the NCC were making clear in trivialities. religious terms that failure to act would inevitably David Chappell argued that King, along with lead to God’s judgement. However, there were other black Christian civil rights leaders, drew just as many appeals for churches to change their strength from an aspect of Christianity simply out of a pragmatic instinct of self- which had survived in black churches, but had preservation lest they become swept away in the been long forgotten in white ones: prophetic tide of history. The CRM made clearer every day religion. Where white integrationists approached that the old days of formal segregation were over their task with a gradualist mindset, hoping to as private and public organizations capitulated in make incremental progress, King was able to use the face of court orders, boycotts and popular religion to “inspire solidarity and self-sacrificial demand. Churches were lagging behind, and devotion to [his] cause” in a way only previously Martin Luther King Jr. made perfectly clear in his seen by pro- and anti-slavery ministers stoking 69 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” what their fate their nation into a Civil War. King and other would be if they didn’t change: “If the church of black ministers were able not only to present today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of equality as a moral imperative, but as an absolute the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, necessity for any true Christian. forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as Other Christians realized the import of an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the King’s warning too, even before his letter. twentieth century.”67 Indeed, many in the NCC Christian ethicist T.B. Maston, in his response to felt King was speaking directly to them when he the Brown verdict, cautioned, “the Christian reflected: religion, as well as political democracy, has a I have heard numerous religious leaders great deal at stake in the outcome of the present 70 of the South call upon their worshipers to struggle regarding segregation.” Ben Lacey comply with a desegregation decision Rose, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, because it is the law, but I have longed to feared that the church was becoming “the last 71 hear white ministers say, follow this stronghold of segregation on earth.” James A. decree because integration is morally Pike, a leading spokesperson for the Episcopal right and the Negro is your brother. In the Churches, cried out in frustration, “Why does the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon Christian community seem unable to heed the the Negro, I have watched white churches religious admonition to ‘love they neighbors?’… stand on the sidelines and merely mouth There is no question that the church has become pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious the last stronghold of an evil it was supposed to ______resist.”72 The anger and frustration over the US’s 68 Ibid, 5. “race problem” of white northern clergy had 69 Chappell, Stone of Hope, 8. 70 Maston, Segregation and Desegregation, vii. reached a fever pitch only previously seen by the 71 Ben Lacey Rose, Racial Segregation in the Church (Richmond: Outlook pre-Civil War abolitionists, even if this zeal did Publishers, 1957), 3 72 James A. Pike, “Bishop Calls Church Bars a 'Stronghold of Evil'” The not as readily translate into action. Afro-American, Oct. 7, 1961: 16. While the judgement of History was

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 16 certainly on the minds of the NCC and other comparison to the 100-strong NCC delegation Christian leadership, much of the NCC’s rhetoric sent to the March on Washington in 1963. The was in line with King’s desires, appealing to the head of the delegation was Eugene Carson Blake, common humanity and divinity of every human. who had served as president of the NCC from Many of its arguments for integration stemmed 1954-57 and now acted as a representative for the directly from the Bible, citing how God created Commission on Religion and Race. Blake was one all men the same, in His image and that therefore of the many speakers that day overshadowed by drawing artificial distinctions between humans King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but his “We based on appearance was against the will of God. Come Late, Late We Come” speech acted as a These arguments were best elaborated by powerful rebuke of continuing racism in the theologians outside the NCC, like Ben Lacey churches.74 Speaking directly to white Christians, Rose, who explained that: “The Bible declares he attempted to shatter the persistent justification that God is no respecter of persons (Acts that segregation is God-ordained, quoting the 10:34-35), and it pointedly warns believers when Abraham Lincoln parable, “Never say God is on they assemble for worship not to be partial our side. Rather pray that we may be found on (James 2:1-9). God has declared that his house is God’s side.” He continued flipping the paradigm, to be a house of prayer for all people (Isa. 56:7; saying, “Yes, we come to march behind and with Mk. 11:17).” Rose read the Bible’s lack of racial these amazingly able leaders of the Negro identifications as proof that God never intended Americans, who, to the shame of almost every race to be a grounds for oppression and white American, have alone and without us discrimination, citing further, “Ho, everyone who mirrored the suffering on the cross of Jesus thirsts come to the waters, (Isa. 55:1); Come to me, Christ.”75 Blake was portraying African all who labor and are heavy laden, (Matt. 11:28)… Americans as messianic saviors of America, To thwart or restrict God Almighty’s gracious rather than as the cursed descendants of Ham and clear invitations is the height of presumption white Protestantism had so long believed them to and blasphemy.”73 These references were be. The month before the March on Washington, convincing and powerful, although Rose he was arrested along with other activists for neglected to mention that race, as a social protesting outside a segregated amusement park construct, meant something entirely different in Baltimore. As he was being arrested, he gave when the Bible was written, and never touched another stinging critique of white churches, the theory that Jesus himself was dark skinned, contending, “White citizens have escaped which was starting to gain traction in black “physically” to the suburbs of [Baltimore] and churches. other cities. But it is too soon for the Christian The efforts of Campbell faded in churches to find out whether all their constituents ______73 Ben Lacey Rose, “When Negroes are Barred from Worship, what Can 74 Shriver, The Unsilent South, 101. be Done About it?” Presbyterian Survey, (July 1964): 18. 75 Eugene Carson Blake, “Late We Come,” in Rhetoric, Religion and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006), 582.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 17 are going to escape morally and psychologically.” called out the gradualism he noticed in many He called into question the epistemological churches, pointing out that often, “Negroes relationship between churches and their attended services but were not welcome as constituents, saying that clergy could not members, or if they were members they were not simultaneously be both leaders and followers of selected for leadership positions in the church… thought, wondering, “The church, by definition, Many white churches still closed their doors and is part of the religious culture of the fled to the suburbs rather than face the problems community… And ordinary American attitudes of a changing neighborhood.”77 This was an affect the suburban churches. But the important important step in linking the role of church question is, is the church affecting theirs?” While discrimination with housing discrimination. Blake’s leadership of the NCC did push the Robert Spike of the NCC himself wrote in his organization further towards walking the walk, it fiery tirade in Look Magazine, “Many churches is an indictment of the massive inertia within the have also salved their consciences with the single NCC that even such a firebrand could not Negro or Oriental member, trotted out as transform it into the sharp instrument of activism evidence that ‘we are making progress.’ Through he desired. such empty gestures, the doctrine of the oneness The problem which J. Oscar Lee had illustrated of the human family under God has become with great detail was that churches did the bare twisted.”78 The force of the CRM did away with minimum. Up until black activists problematized these incremental nudgings and made clear that segregation in national headlines, the bare the bare minimum which would be accepted was minimum white churches were required to do to immediate integration. It removed the interact with the issue of segregation was comfortable blinders of complacency and made absolutely nothing; they could ignore it and sleep segregation a clear-cut moral issue to white with clear consciences. What the NCC had been institutions. trying to get these churches to do during the In fact, many youths were already taking 1950s (while largely failing to do so within their the initiative on their own to integrate churches. own ranks) was to increase the bare minimum to beginning in Atlanta in 1960.79 These protests some form of action which at least appeared to be were what Stephen Haynes called “moral moving towards integration. For many churches, spectacles of exclusion and embrace.”80 As one the illusion of action was often enough to protestor put it, “Our presence…is itself an act of continue de facto segregation. Churches devised worship…The presentation of our bodies a methods to show desegregation on paper, but symbol of the church’s tragic rejection of the which bore no resemblance to the actual racial gospel message of brotherhood and love.”81 The makeup of the church. David M. Reimers also kneel-ins drew large amounts of press in ______76 "White Christian Civil Righter Asks: 'What can Christian do?'" Chicago 79 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour, 12. Daily Defender (Daily Edition), Jul 18, 1963. 80 Ibid, 14. 77Reimers, White Protestantism and the Negro, 178 81 Ibid. 78Spike, “Our Churches’ Sin,” 30.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 18 proportion to their small scale because they made 1950s, when funding for political activity was low segregation an immediate, tangible problem to and the NCC’s Washington office was explicitly churches trying to avoid action. The YMCA and forbidden from making any “decision regarding YWCA were also making comparatively rapid policy.”83 Henry J. Pratt argues that this change progress in integration, led by Frank T. Nelson, in the NCC’s style of leadership came largely the National Student Secretary of the YMCA, who from pragmatism, namely, “a growing awareness identified the link between class and race among leading churchmen of the continued discrimination, saying with venom, “The more diminution in Protestantism's societal position affluent the pillars of the church, the more and a concern that accepted social action efficient the screenings of ‘undesirables.’ In this strategies, though appropriate in an earlier process of preserving the purity of the faithful, period, might now have become insufficient to race and color have been touchstones of the task at hand.”84 Ditching the conventional acceptance or rejection.”82 It was movements like methods, the NCC entered the midwestern these which nagged at the consciousness of the church milieu attempting to simultaneously comparatively sluggish NCC, who were realizing defend civil rights and the precarious position of that unless they joined the fight now, on their own the religion they represented in the American terms, the fight would be brought to them. Their social hierarchy. window for being civil rights heroes rather than This was the first time the NCC took the villains was closing quickly. lead in a grassroots organizing initiative and they The NCC’s March on Washington resolved not to come up short this time. They delegation seemed paltry in comparison to the chose the Midwest for several reasons: many of expansiveness of the NCC’s next angle of attack, the congressmen there were undecided about the the Midwest Strategy. The debate around the bill, Protestantism had deep roots there which passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a could be used to convince ordinary citizens and concrete goal the NCC could work towards and the congressmen, and there was little presence of work they did, adopting a specifically midwestern black voters or activist groups to make direct strategy of swaying local white Christians to write contact with the largely rural and homogenous to their congressmen, lobbying for the passage of population who were unconcerned with civil the bill. The Midwest Strategy showed the NCC rights; for most white Midwesterners, the CRM finally discarding the shackles of the belief that had little effect on their daily lives. This new religious leaders should not explicitly influence leadership role was also a chance to form politics. This direct involvement in passing a connections with other activist groups; Charles specific act was a hard turn from its agenda in the Cobb and Thomas L. Brown of the Student ______Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 82 Frank T. Wilson, “Golgotha 1964,” in Rhetoric, Religion and the Civil 85 Rights Movement, ed. Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, (Waco, Tex.: joined the effort. James Findlay surveyed the Baylor University Press, 2006), 628. archival records of Senator Hubert Humphrey of 83 Pratt, “The Growth of Political Activism,” 331. Minnesota, the legislator in large part responsible 84 Pratt, “The Growth of Political Activism,” 333. for getting congressmen on board with the bill as

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 19 well as of four undecided midwestern legislators, Humphrey wrote to thank the NCC for its efforts, three of whom ended up voting for the Civil saying that without them, “this bill could never Rights Act: Senators Everett Dickson of Illinois, have become law.”91 While it is impossible to and Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, and gauge exactly which influences helped these Representatives James Bromwell of Iowa and lawmakers decide to vote the way they did, this Charles Halleck of Indiana.86 His research was a huge victory for the members of the NCC, showed that hundreds of church people had a vindication of their strategies, and a salve on written to these congressmen urging for the their consciousness. They had put their words passage of the act.87 into action. The Midwest Strategy represented the best Mississippi became another area of focus of the white religious community during the for the NCC in the 1960s. It began with sending a CRM. As Findlay noted, “The political power of delegation to the funeral of Medgar Evers, the the liberal religious community was never again state director of The National Association for the mobilized so fully and effectively as it was in 1963 Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who and 1964.”88 The effort began with a nine-state was assassinated on June 11, 1963. There, the “legislative conference,” which emphasized the NAACP requested the delegation’s help in need for religious leadership in passing the Civil changing minds in the town of Clarksdale, but Rights Act and set up “Civil Rights Workshops” they were immediately rebuffed by the white throughout the Midwest.89 Teams of activists, locals.92 They found a more effective approach ministers, and legal experts were sent to churches by providing bail money and legal aid to black in critical voting areas to hold workshops with activists who had been arrested in protests in clergymen, teaching them how to discuss the Mississippi. They formed a close connection with CRM and the Civil Rights Act and to answer the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee questions and persuade parishioners to write to (SNCC) based on shared goals and mutual their congressmen, making moral and religious necessity, as well as admiration. Robert Spike appeals to vote for the bill. The NCC also sent admired SNCC’s militancy and organizing delegations to Congress to lobby congressmen capabilities and SNCC leader Robert Moses directly and to hold prayer demonstrations found the presence of white, upper class workers outside the Capitol. Eugene Carson Blake testified beneficial to garnering media attention.93 Over a before Congress and delegation members hundred ministers converged on Hattiesburg, continued putting pressure on the congressmen Mississippi, to demonstrate and canvass for black directly.90 Nearly every undecided midwestern voter registration. congressmen voted for the bill and Hubert The NCC also used its resources to help ______85 Findlay, Church People, 80. 90 Ibid, 77. 86 James Findlay, "Religion and Politics in the Sixties: The Churches and 91 Ibid, 88. the Civil Rights Act of 1964." The Journal of American History 77, no. 1 92 Findlay, Church People, 79. (1990): 66-92. 93 Ibid, 80. 87 Findlay, “Religion and Politics,” 82. 88 Findlay, Church People, 64. 89 Findlay, “Religion and Politics,” 72.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 20 SNCC prepare for the Freedom Summer activities getting themselves into was and were relieved to of 1964, this time completely acknowledging their relieved to leave, albeit with an altered perception inexperience with such matters and taking a of just how pervasive the inequality still was. One backseat to the organizing of SNCC. The NCC recalled, “I felt that I had been in hell for three served as “facilitators and enablers,”94 not as weeks. I came home with double pneumonia and leaders or even as camera-friendly symbols. They total exhaustion.”97 It was one of the few times in helped provide meeting spaces, cars, legal defense, American history in which whites trusted only and occasionally chipped in a few words of advice. blacks and feared local whites. The black activists However, it was also during this time that Edwin were often suspicious and sometimes resentful of Espy, the general secretary of the NCC, turned the presence of the inexperienced whites, but the over a list of names of activists and citizens stress and necessary solidarity of the ensuing involved in the Freedom Summer to J. Edgar activities helped build bonds of experience. A Hoover in order to be perceived as anti- white minister recalled that at the beginning of communist.95 This was to many a betrayal and an the Freedom Summer, “a Negro minister told me, unpleasant revelation of the hierarchy of priorities ‘I will hate you this summer, but forgive me.’”98 of many northern liberals during the CRM, who Besides their frequent testimonies that would moderate their views and pull back into they were acting out of a Christian duty and that their own privilege in order to avoid any suspicion their work was making them feel like good of communism. This was much less of an issue for Christians, the ministers rarely performed any SNCC, whose young members put racial equality specifically religious roles. Many in Mississippi before arbitrary ideological categorizations. joined black churches for their worship because Following the killings of James Cheney, they were rejected from the white churches - even Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman on bodily thrown out in one instance.99 This June 21, 1964, the NCC organized the placement interaction, both in religious and secular contexts, of “minister-counselors” in communities where did give many staff and volunteers a profound activist programs were taking place. These were sense of fulfillment of their Christian duty in not meant to be leaders, but simply restraints on accordance with the Social Gospel. One violence as both the NCC and SNCC believed that participant recalled, “I felt like I was where history the presence of clergy would be able to “Spread oil was, that my role as a young clergyman was much on troubled waters.”96 Around 275 counselors in keeping with the Old Testament prophets.”100 were brought in, including some women, The main challenge of any organization laypeople and Jews, although none stayed past challenging segregation during the CRM was August 1964, when the Freedom Summer drew to making white Southerners realize that segregation a close. Few of the volunteers from the North was a problem in the first place, not a solution as knew how complicated the mess of hate they were they overwhelmingly believed. Boycotts presented ______94 Ibid, 85. 97 Ibid, 89. 95 Ibid, 87. 98 Ibid, 97. 96 Findlay, Church People, 89. 99 Ibid, 94. 100 Ibid, 99.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 21 it as an economic problem. The World War II including the wives of the organizers, excluded Double Victory Campaign, which called for the from the process.103 The Delta Ministry, in a defeat of racism both abroad and at home, departure from similar Christian organizations presented it as a patriotic problem. Organizations elsewhere, devoted none of its resources to like the NAACP presented it as a legal problem. missionary work - conversion was never its Organizations like the Southern Christian purpose. Instead, they intended to be a servant of Leadership Conference (SCLC) and SNCC the people, letting the local black population presented it as a moral problem. And the NCC express their needs and developing programs to presented it as a moral and religious problem. An meet them. The most direct assistance program editorialist writing in the 1960 issue of The was that to provide food and clothing using NCC Student Voice (SNCC’s official newsletter) said, funding and donations from outside churches. It “Throughout the years, the white Southerner has also successfully lobbied federal and state failed to realize the moral wrongness of governments to increase Food Stamp and segregation because the problem of segregation Distribution programs. The NCC staff partnered has not been presented to him as a moral with the SNCC, the Mississippi Freedom problem.”101 This was where the NCC’s power Democratic Party (MFDP) and the Council of lay. Federated Organizations (COFO) to continue The NCC did not completely abandon voter registration efforts and to create a Freedom Mississippi after the Freedom Summer. The most Information Service, a news bureau to distribute committed activists remained to help found the political news to the community. The Ministry Delta Ministry, a small interracial church in one of also supported the Child Development Group of the most segregated parts of Mississippi. The Mississippi (CDGM) a summer education director was NCC staff member Arthur Thomas, a program created using new Head Start funding in respected Methodist minister who had successfully 1965.104 The Ministry provided staff, logistics, organized an interracial church in Durham, NC, lobbying for continued funding, and secured and the assistant director was Warren McKenna, sponsorship from Mary Holmes College since the another NCC member who had proven himself by state government refused to sponsor the running minister-counselor workshops during the program.105 Freedom Summer. The staff was nearly completely The NCC remained in the background the representative of mainline Protestantism with entire time, deferring to local leadership, with members of every major branch, and even none of its staff being outspoken or straying from included a Jewish layperson.102 However, the the mission of remaining a cooperative servant. staff, while fully integrated, was nearly and even All of these programs involved intimate and included a Jewish layperson.102 However, the constant participation of the Delta community, staff, while fully integrated, was nearly all male especially from parents. This cooperation ensured except for a few secretaries, leaving many women, that the Ministry formed close bonds with the ______101 Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour, 13. 104 Findlay, Church People, 127. 102 Findlay, Church People, 118 105 Ibid, 127. 103 Ibid, 119.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 22 community it served and that everyone was this knowledge was.107 involved in the decision-making process. This was Spike was replaced by Benjamin Payton, a a radical twist for the majority-black community. young, black minister from the South, three For decades, its laws and policies were imposed on characteristics which were lacking in the NCC it by politicians chosen in elections they could not leadership. While the organization was no longer participate in. Even when activist groups like as segregated as it had been in the 1950s, the SNCC arrived to fight for their political rights, the leadership was still predominantly white and members of the community rarely had a voice in hesitant to engage with the emerging rise of black these activities. The CDGM provided education power rhetoric in civil rights discourses.108 Not and jobs where none existed before and the voter only were white leaders unsure of where they fit registration initiatives allowed the community into a movement defined by black power rather greater participation in the political process. than common brotherhood, but they were acutely While the leadership of the Delta Ministry aware of the PR effects of siding with a more was NCC staff and received support from the militant organization. Black Power had been national organization, it became a unique and linked to the increasingly frequent instances of mostly independent group. Meanwhile, the urban unrest and rioting, and as such, scared off national leadership of the NCC was turning to the allegiances and dollars of white liberals. broader issues of race relations, rather than Payton however, was less fearful, and helped focusing on small towns in the South. Between its organize the National Commission of Black work with SNCC and its efforts to gather support Churchmen (NCBC) (originally the National for the Civil Rights Act in the Midwest, the NCC Commission of Negro Churchmen), which had earned enough prestige and publicity to became “the principal mainstream ecumenical participate in upper-level discussions, sitting in church group advocated black power concepts during presidential addresses to congress and and strategies throughout the rest of the communicating with President Johnson sixties.”109 The NCBC was not as radical as other himself.106 Black Power leaders like Stokely Carmichael; it However, in September 1965, Robert Spike still promoted integration and working within the resigned as head of the Commission on Religion existing system. It stressed the hypocrisy of the and Race. One year later, he was murdered for white churches who continued to refuse to fully unknown motives. Theories postulate that the integrate, lamenting the very circumstances that government could have been involved, or just a made the Black Power Movement (BPM) community member angered by his activism. It necessary in the first place, saying, “As black men could also have been a result of the rampant who were long ago forced out of the white church homophobia which existed in the church and in to create and to wield ‘black power,’ we fail to the police department, for Spike was bisexual, understand the emotional quality of the outcry of although it is unknown just how common some [white] clergy against the use of the term ______106 Findlay, Church People, 136 107 Ibid, 176. 108 Ibid, 177. 109 Findlay, Church People, 184.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 23 today.”110 The NCBC was the first ecumenical education, and health care.”114 Payton drew up a organization to address the historical roots of concrete plan with Seymour Melman, an church segregation, recognizing both the social industrial-engineering professor, to reconstruct and religious divisions between the black and metropolitan centers to provide exactly these white church, elaborating, “the Negro Church was things in a more efficient way.115 While these created as a result of the refusal to submit to the blueprints contributed to the NCBC’s platform on indignities of a false kind of ‘integration’ in which urban restructuring, it was more a hypothetical all power was in the hands of white people. A more ideal than a concrete plan of action. equal sharing of power is precisely what is The membership of the NCC was required as the precondition of authentic human becoming increasingly polarized on how to interaction.”111 The NCBC, while still retaining a approach these new calls for equality and black hope that an equal sharing of power was possible, power. In 1967, the Commission on Religion and was issuing the same criticisms of white leadership Race was swallowed by a new Department of and co-optation as groups like SNCC. Social Justice and Benjamin Payton resigned As movements like the NCBC shifted the shortly thereafter, putting an unofficial end to the conditions and expectations for equality, the civil rights fervor which had consumed the NCC rhetoric of the NCC shifted as well from simplistic four years earlier. The actions of the NCC messages of brotherhood to more complex reverted back to ineffectual statements and public arguments tackling the roots of inequality, in relations stunts, such as the “Crisis in the Nation” particular de facto housing segregation. Robert program, which attempted to address urban Spike, for example, showcased the first message disturbances.116 The fear of communism still when he called on church people to pray for “all pervaded these efforts. Spike had predicted these those who fear their fellows of a different color or fears before his death and tried to convince station. What a waste of power, what a foolishness church leaders to shrug them off and take the lead of mind!”112 Later into his tenure, he added in coming to a peaceful resolution, saying: economic criticisms such as “The area of greatest Most white people…are easily convinced concentration for congregations (particularly in that all change is a plot to undermine their the suburbs) ought to be housing. If congregations security. The charges of "Communist'' and would really take the lead toward open housing, "Red" will fill the air when those trapped in the problem could virtually be licked in five years’ the ghetto organize to protest or to register time.”113 His successor, Benjamin Payton, began their opinions politically. But the churches his tenure with an ambitious plan for the future, must interpret the meanings of events in a calling for a “program of economic development city in their moral and theological to make civil rights real, in housing, employment, dimensions.117 ______114 110 National Committee of Negro Churchmen, “Black Power Statement,” in Findlay, Church People, 178 115 Black Theology: A Documentary History, ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore and Ibid, 180. 116 James H. Cone (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979): 25. Findlay, Church People, 188. 117 111 Ibid, 25. Spike, “Our Churches’ Sin,” 30. 112 Findlay, Church People, 77. 113 Spike, “Our Churches’ Sin,” 30.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 24 Nevertheless, the NCC had lost its stomach for race their aims for the future. The black churchmen relations and began devoting its energies to other affirmed their solidarity with the BPM and called societal issues, most notably, opposing the war in on the white churches to do the same. They also Vietnam. A thorough analysis of the NCC’s called attention to the subtle mental colonization involvement with anti-Vietnam movements and of belonging to an organization with white contentious objectors is beyond the scope of this leadership in a white-dominated society paper, but it is worth noting that the NCC believed worshipping a religion reverse-engineered by that taking a stance on Vietnam would be the best whites to maintain white supremacy. They saw way to revive its ecumenical spirit domestically and themselves as complicit in unwittingly form stronger bonds with ecumenical contaminating the black church with white organizations abroad.118 influence, and saw the BPM as a key to liberation, After a tumultuous summer in 1967, the saying, “We rejoice in the Black Power NCC held the Conference on the Church and Movement, which is not only the renewed hope Religious Tensions and for the first time in NCC for Black People, but gives the Black Church once conference history, the white and black delegations again, its reason for existing.”121 The statement voluntarily separated into their own caucuses. This finished with a call for the NCBC to become more was a major blow to an organization which had independent and expand to assist the BPM founded itself on principles of desegregation. The financially and logistically as the NCC had done preamble of the conference grappled with the in Mississippi just three years ago, and, most inescapable conclusion that while religiously, all tellingly of all, to remove all images suggesting men are brethren, made One by God, the goals and that God is white. The Declaration of White priorities of black and white Christians had drifted Churchmen was less than half a page long, and too far apart for this to be true socially, even admitted white complicity in the urban riots, among friends. They “discovered that in order to hoped that the two could work in synergy, and learn the truth about ourselves and our situation, resigned themselves to the increasingly so successfully covered over by years of hypocrisy permanent split.122 Its tone was deflated and and dissimulation, we had to make a decision pessimistic; the white church had lost its unprecedented in ecumenical conferences under motivation as it had after abolition, a century the aegis of the National Council.”119 As David earlier. Chappell explained this fracturing, “the alliance The final nail in the coffin for the NCC’s between black Christian civil rights groups and involvement in race relations was the polarizing American liberals was more an alliance of Black Manifesto speech given by James Foreman, convenience than one of deep ideological the former executive secretary of SNCC. At the affinity.”120 Each caucus released a statement of National Black Economic Development ______118 Gill, Embattled Ecumenism, 6. 120 Chappell, Stone of Hope, 4. 119 Black and White Caucuses, National Council of Churches Conference, 121 Black Caucus, “The Church and the Urban Crisis,” 46. “The Church and the Urban Crisis” in Black Theology: A Documentary 122 Black Caucus, “The Church and the Urban Crisis,” 46-47. History, ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979): 43-44.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 25 Conference, a gathering in April 1969 partially contrast, the NCBC, which Payton had helped organized by the NCC, Foreman gave a stinging form, endorsed the Manifesto, saying that by critique of white churches, espoused a Marxist plan paying reparations, white churches would“ for the redistribution of wealth and gave a list of demonstrate to other American institutions the demands to the white churches and synagogues of authenticity of their frequently verbalized America – the most eye-catching of which was $500 contrition and of their faith in the justice of God,” million in reparations.123 He believed that the explicitly linking Christian faith with White Church had a special guilt among American reparations.127 One of the NCBC leaders, institutions as it was complicit in forming the racial Gayraud Wilmore, articulated clearly what this capitalism which profited off of black labor and meant for church institutions, that the split over oppression. Foreman dramatized these demands Black Power, “completed the destruction of over the next several months, interrupting Sunday integrationism as the dominant theology of the services in churches in urban centers to read his black community. In 1969 it was time for white manifesto, earning him publicity and media churchmen to face this fact unblinkingly. The attention. He and his supporters continued quest for racial integration…has come to an demonstrating outside church centers including the end.”128 NCC’s Interchurch Center, provoking the trustees In an effort to compromise, the NCC of the Interchurch Center to issue a restraining attempted to form a mutual fund and order and to propose an injunction, which the organization to help secure financial support for Council rejected.124 These methods were not black economic initiatives: The Project on entirely unsuccessful; Foreman was able to pressure Minority Group Social and Economic larger church organizations into donating over $1 Development. This effort collapsed at the last million to his economic initiative by 1970.125 minute when the fund management company While many in the NCC outright disagreed backed off. Meanwhile, Protestantism as a whole with Foreman, even those who did agree were was losing its foothold as a central pillar of the uncomfortable with the blatant Marxism of the American social scene. Church memberships were Manifesto and the confrontational methods he used falling, as were contributions to the NCC, which to seek his goals. Foreman’s efforts were had to cut back its budget. The 1970s saw the reminiscent in the minds of many white members NCC shift back into autopilot, taking few new of the urban riots. A Gallup poll also revealed an actions in racial issues. Findlay suggests that this overwhelming opposition to the demanded tapering off comes from the fact that unlike the reparations among white churchgoers and a 52% grassroots civil rights movements of black opposition among black churchgoers.126 The NCC churches, the NCC’s actions were elitist and led was hesitant to oppose popular opinion. By from the top, indeed often going against the ______123 James Foreman, “The Black Manifesto,” in Black Theology: A 128 Gayraud Wilmore, “The Church’s Response to the Black Documentary History, ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone, Manifesto,” (1969): 3. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979): 84. 124 Findlay, Church People, 205. 125 Findlay, Church People, 212. 126 Ibid, 206. 127 Ibid, 208. MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 26 desires of the local whites with whom they Civil Rights leaders because they were unable to worked.n129 O ce the top ministers and council swim too far from the shore, to give up too much members backed off, there was no one left to stoke of their institutionalized privilege. SNCC’s famous the revolutionary flame. Position Paper on Black Power was almost I would argue that the NCC was doomed from the prophetic, saying that whites could not lead the beginning to collapse on the issue of Civil Rights for movement in part because “they cannot relate to two main reasons. First, Findlay correctly points out the black religious experience, nor to the black the disconnection between the leadership and the church unless, of course, this church has taken on base. To this, I would add a second: the NCC’s white manifestations.”130 inability to confront the racist heritage of its moral From day one, the NCC ignored the compass: American Protestantism. The statements spiritual leaps and bounds made by black churches of leaders like J. Oscar Lee and Robert Spike showed and assumed that the Protestantism that would an acute awareness of the social and political guide them would be white Protestantism. White reasons why the church was segregated, but not the Protestantism was still a neophyte in addressing religious reasons. They were aware of the church’s race in a way not tainted by Cotton Mather’s complicity in the racial hierarchy as a brick-and- slavery optimization, which had festered in white mortar institution but failed to fully examine its divinity schools for centuries. It is unclear what theological complicity in the beliefs it continued to the NCC’s response was to the 1967 Black propound. After abolition, the black and white Caucus’s demand that white images of God be churches became separate not only geographically, removed, but it was clear that this was an issue but religiously. The role of religion in the formation they would never have considered as long as they of America’s racial landscape is one of the great embraced the white brand of Protestantism. Black historical paradoxes; black and white churches were churches, in their minds, represented a wayward, reading the same book and yet took such vastly lower-class form of Christianity which black different lessons away from it. Black churches religious leaders must outgrow. And those black thought about race every single day for centuries religious leaders were expected to fully abandon because it always had an immediate impact on their their backgrounds and fall in line. Gayraud existence. This is not to say that they always agreed Wilmore put it best when he wrote that the NCC on issues of race – many black ministers strongly was “never altogether comfortable with black disagreed with Martin Luther King and the SCLC – leadership because [they] were never really but when the moment for revolution arrived, black members of ‘the club.’ They came out of strange, churches were at the forefront while white churches ‘Native Son’ backgrounds and attended theological cowered in the background. It was as SNCC schools most White people had never heard of.” claimed, that white organizations could never be Wilmore continued, linking the contemporary ______racist ideas critiqued by Richard Wright’s Native 129 Findlay, Church People, 223. 130 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, “Position Paper on Black Son with the racist, community-destroying ideas Power,” in Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis of the slavery era: Farrakhan, ed William L. Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997): 120. But the Whites were confident, too

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 27 confident, that in a crisis these Black leaders million churchgoers.134 But it has never returned would conform to the stipulations of White to directly address church segregation and the Protestantism. They were presumed to be history behind it. ‘house n******’ who associated with the ‘field Conclusion n******’ after office hours but did not share The NCC is an excellent case study in how their sectarian biases and mistrust of White activism is hindered by the vested interests of the people.131 activists, especially, but not exclusively, white Wilmore hoped that by pointing out the activists. White members of the NCC had much mechanisms by which black Christians were less personal stake in the success of integration and expected to conform to white norms, they could achieving social equality for African Americans. In avoid these pitfalls in the future. The NCC had fact, whether they consciously recognized it or not, focused too much on integrating black Christians they stood to lose their hallowed place at the top of into the white church structure and not enough on the social hierarchy, which limited their horizons. erasing the hierarchy which followed them, even They mostly viewed integration as a relatively into integrated churches. Black Christians remained simple fix – changing outdated attitudes – without on the margins and would continue to do so until ever delving into the extent of the structural the NCC was willing to incorporate their ideological damage those attitudes caused or the history of beliefs, which the NCC never did. They were where those attitudes came from for do to so “oblivious to the heterodox and rebellious currents would be to implicate themselves and lose their that ran through the ranks of Black Christians,” credentials as saviors. Those savior aspirations fating them to reproduce a mental segregation of came from the very Christian ideologies which had Christianity along racial lines which exists still caused so much of the problem in the first place today.132 during the era of slavery. Cotton Mather’s The NCC has remained firmly on the advocacy to save slaves’ souls at the expense of political left, taking numerous other stances on their bodies created a rift between black and white societal debates, such as supporting the National Protestantism which has not been fully reconciled Anti-Klan Network, and opposing nuclear to this day. proliferation, states-rights in issues of school prayer The NCC did prove that religion was and still is an and abortion, President Reagan’s proposed immensely powerful force for communicating amendment to require a balanced budget, and messages of change and that any movement which arming the Nicaraguan Contras.133 It has grown to desires to effect a revolution in the hearts and become the largest ecumenical organization in the minds of the American people cannot overlook the United States, spanning 38 Protestant and Eastern moral role which religion plays in the daily lives of Orthodox communions as full members and over 45 millions. Religion, specifically Protestantism, has ______131 Gayraud Wilmore, “The Attack on White Religion: Introduction,” in 134 Encyclopedia Britannica, “National Council of the Churches of Christ in Black Theology: A Documentary History, ed. Gayraud S. Wilmore and James the U.S.A.,” Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., April 4, 2019. H. Cone, (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979): 71. 132 Wilmore, “The Attack on White Religion,” 71. 133 Marjorie Hyer, "Church Council Opposes Laws to Bypass Courts," The Washington Post (1974-Current File), Nov 06, 1982.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 28 specifically Protestantism, has always been tied to politics despite the US’s nominal separation of church and state. American religious leaders, national and local, wield tremendous influence in what their constituents believe to be moral and normative and therefore have a responsibility to assess the history of their own beliefs. Religious institutions are still forming their own identity along with that of their constituents and it is important that such a crucial part of their history be recognized and reckoned with as part of that formation. The NCC is larger than ever and still has the potential to effect change through its powerful dialogue between Christian denominations. However, if white churches (and other places of worship outside the scope of this paper) maintain a “coalition of silence,” with regards to their recent civil rights history, “they can lose or renarrativize threatening memories from the past.”135 The NCC teaches us that racial conservatism is neither static, nor all-consuming. In today’s social and political landscape, “the racist is a spoiled or stigmatized identity; separation from it is important;” and yet racism continues to flourish without racists.136 This is because the racist heritage which laces many of the ostensibly race-neutral components of our personality, like religion, remains unexamined. This silence is what built up an inevitably insurmountable mental barrier for the NCC and prevented them from taking up the moral torch their societal position demanded of them during the most crucial time in their history. ______135 Gill, “Recalling a Difficult Past,” 45. 136 Ibid, 45.

MUMURRAAJJ • z• z..umnumn.e.edduu/MUR/MURAAJJ Volume 4• Issue 6 29 Bibliography

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